Tag: family

We spend so much of our lives, rushing from A to K to Z, thinking of the future, reminiscing about the past, and constantly in a state of planning, that we often forget to live, engage and be in the present.

It’s synonym is gift for a reason.

I always have things to do. I guess, duh Fred, EVERYONE’S life story. I guess my point is, in my spare time I rarely am lounging about watching hours of TV on end. I try to limit my social media use when it is just aimless trawling trawling trawling through news feeds. Recently I’ve begun planning out my days meticulously, so I can get in the maximum number of productive seconds, minutes and hours out of it that I can while baby girl is at kinder. This usually involves Zumba, some kind of writing, and then doing some sort of house-related organisational activity, a work in progress that is 18 months growing following our move (still!)

But just as I am always trying to tick things off my never-ending eternal to-do list, so am I realising I need to sometimes, just stop. Sit and DO nothing, for like, 5 minutes. Go through that mag that’s been sitting on the coffee table.

Play with baby girl.

I am very aware of her words to me. I am also aware of phrases I use like “I’m too busy,” “I can’t now” and “after.” I don’t like to use them, and then again, at times you can’t avoid them. You will be in the throes of something, let’s say dinner, and if I were to stop and go and play with baby girl’s barbie dolls, well our dinner would end up being blackened chicken schnitzel with burnt mini pizzas and soggy vegies.

But as was the case today, I stopped. Baby girl asked if we could play an exciting game, and I paused – I am so used to thinking of what I am doing next that I didn’t even realise that there was nothing I had planned for that moment – and said “sure. Let’s play.”

She was to be sleeping beauty, and I was to get her Anna, Elsa, and another barbie doll, and wake her up by presenting to her the Prince. I did just that, getting the dolls to wake her up off of the carpeted floor, but she did her trademark “no, like this,” and showed me by kissing me on the nose, that she was expecting a kiss from Prince charming himself.

I smiled. Okay then.

I instructed her to stay there on the floor, then ran off to her room to get something. Back I came, with her dolls, and doing some pretend doll voices, the dolls then presented the Prince to a sleeping, Beauty. He leant down, gave her a kiss… she woke up…

And it was her Captain Feathersword doll.

The look of wild hilarity and fun spread across her face as she refused his ‘advances,’ and we doubled over on the floor cacking ourselves silly. I took the turn of being Sleeping Beauty then as she presented the feathery pirate to me, and then in my subsequent turns of finding a Prince for her, I presented to her my original 90s Ken Barbie, who honestly I thought was as good a Prince as any, but she said “yuck!” and on second thoughts and looks I realised that in his 90s bow-tie suit he looked more like a 40 year-old Dad figure than a suitor. Fair enough.

The last dude I found for her was also Wiggles themed, palm-sized Lachy doll from the latest group incarnation. “Here you go,” I mimicked the dolls, placing him on her face for a lip smacker.

“No Lachy, yuck!” she squealed, and we doubled over again in laughter, laughing more because we were there watching each other laugh and cry laughing. It was GOLD.

Tonight after all the cooking and cleaning and getting ready for the next day, I miraculously found some spare time. And I didn’t fill it with stuff on my to-do list. I turned to my private ‘me’ list, and sat at the table to read the Peninsula Kids magazine we had received at kinder that day.

Sure, I was reading articles written from fellow bloggers I knew and people who I had read about online. It was kinda like homework. But still, I was reading, I was engaging, and I was growing. And all the while a few metres away, Hubbie was creating his own game with baby girl – chasing her around the table, pretending to be distracted by something else and then running for her, until he would catch her in a bear hug, pull her into the couch, and then it would start all over again.

I sat there, reading amidst the laughter and the love, glad that she had had a full day of games, memories and love. I wasn’t in complete peace amidst the noise, but also somehow, I was.

Just breathtaking. No water views for AGES here, but instead of the sea, the horizon displayed hills upon hills of wondrous beauty, magical greenery, and the most picturesque trees imaginable.

I got to share this beautiful sunset with my extended family tonight, at my Uncle’s house. There were old cousins, new cousins that I got to meet, and then there was the sweetest part of the night for me, watching my cousin, interact and play with baby girl, probably as he did with me, so so many years ago.

Hide ‘n’ seek, cat and chicken seeking, and piggybacks were all on the menu. Seeing them together reminded me of my own childhood.

At our closest, we have family that lives 35 minutes away. Most of the family are a cruise-control freeway length of 40-45 minutes, while the rest of them, well…

TAKE YOUR PICK.

We can be driving for hours to see someone. An hour? Yep. 90 minutes? For sure. 2 hours?

Yep even that far.

Our own parents, who used to live 7 and 15 minutes away from us, are now a day-trip length of 80 minutes.

We aren’t really catching up with anyone on this ‘side’ of town yet.In this town. We haven’t been here long enough to form those kinds of bonds, just yet.

I mean, we knew what we were in for. It wasn’t as if we didn’t know where everyone lived, or we didn’t know that we knew absolutely no one in the town we were moving to…

Still, it can get a little lonely. We wouldn’t change our location or house for the world, we genuinely really truly love it. However when we got home from our little Barwon Heads getaway on the weekend, after being just the trio of us for days already, we so desperately were seeking company, and needed to be with someone other than ourselves…

But locally, there was none to be found at our immediate disposal.

That’s why we are so happy when friends and family pop by for a visit. We had such friends pop over tonight, and we went to all efforts to make it a fabulous night.

We genuinely enjoy having people over and hosting, and being the fact that we are now further from many of them, we make the concerted effort when they do arrive on our doorstep.

Whether you have friends popping by unexpectedly, driving a long distance to see you, or you need to organise the meet up weeks in advance…

Having someone want to come and visit you, is happiness in itself, without all the food, the drink…

Even the CAKE.

Feeling grateful for those in our life who make time for us, and more so the wonderful friends who came through our door tonight.

I have the fortunate problem of having too much to be grateful for today.

Nah. NEVER too much gratitude to be had.

It was a truly blissful and relaxing day. It really did feel like we were on holiday. Aside from the quiet reading I did at the park while Hubbie played some b-ball

And the great time we had at my Uncle and Aunty’s place taking in mother nature, her finest and most organic produce, and the surrounds of heavenly greenery

(My Uncle’s bees drinking water around the large bowl)

It was what we did at 10:30am that had us in absolute awe.

We started off once again with no real plans after the kinder drop off was done… Hubbie mentioned coffee, it was to be guaranteed to follow on Main street, and when we appeared to be reading each other’s minds with the same café – Store Fifteen – I had to add, due to proximity’s sake –

“Why don’t we walk down to the pier?”

This man of mine loves sitting down to drink his coffee – not many takeaway cups there. But, the water called.

“Sure.”

We took our large latte and regular cappuccino, and wandered down the path in between the curving coastline and huge park that baby girl loves to frequent, until we reached closer water.

From here on out, I think I’ll let the photos do the talking.

It was so incredibly peaceful. There were people about, yes. But it was still. It was quiet. We stayed at the tip of the pier the longest, looking out at the world beyond.

A nearby fisherman spoke to us, telling us he had waited for this perfect Summer’s Day for weeks. Mid 20s, 6km winds… it was the perfect day for fishing.

And we had stumbled upon it.

We listened to the fishermens banter about bait, took in some more sunshine and pristine water views, I made small talk with a seagull… and off we went, making thanks for such a tremendously glorious sight, and vowing that the Mornington Pier walk would become a part of our wanders and visits, a bit more often.

There is nothing better is there, than to catch up with loved ones and eat ’til your hearts content, drink just as much, and blab your deepest desires, sing from the depths of your loins, and just have a ‘bloody’ good time?

This all happened tonight, and every time we have nights like this, I do NOT take them for granted. I am always grateful for the love, laughs, support and great memories we make together.